Karma
by RosesBud
Summary: Rose is having a really bad day... surely it can't get any worse? Post Doomsday.


**Okay so lately I've been drowning in angst and figured I'd try and do something fairly light-hearted instead ;)**

Posh Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all characters herein are property of the BBC.

**Karma **

On the 1st of January that year (two years, three months and a day since she'd last seen the Doctor, not that she was keeping count, thank you very much), Rose got out of bed the wrong side – metaphorically speaking. In fact, before she'd even got out, everything had started going wrong. Peering bleary-eyed from beneath her flowery duvet she eyed the glowing red display of her clock radio.

"Oh no, you do not say eight thirty five," she told it, rubbing her throat when her voice came out sounding less like a young woman in her prime and more like a frog. She was sure her brain had told her legs to move at this point – in fact she was sure the command was, 'Quick! Leap from bed – up up up!' What she managed was a sort of half-roll, half-slide from beneath the warm covers to the carpeted floor. She dragged herself to her feet and dared a look in the mirror above her dressing table. Big mistake. Marilyn Manson stared back at her. She rubbed at the black mascara rings beneath her eyes and shuddered.

"Cold, cold, cold," she muttered, stuffing her protesting arms in to her dressing gown and lurching across the room to the door. "Ow, ow, ow," she added, grabbing at her head. Unbidden, memories of the night before swam to the surface of her pea soup-like brain. Why? Why did she let Mickey talk her in to going out? New Year or no New Year, she knew she had to work the next day. And more importantly, why oh why did she have to go and get the sort of job that meant you had to work on New Year's Day anyway?

"Bloody Torchwood," she muttered, bumping in to Pete on the landing.

"Shouldn't you be in work?" he asked her helpfully. She nodded sullenly, heading for the bathroom. Great fun living with your boss, she _had_ to get her own place.

"I'm not in 'til later, but I'll drop you in," he told her. "You're in no fit state to drive." With that he grinned and bounded downstairs, far too energetically for Rose's liking.

She had turned the shower on, waited for it to heat, stepped under it, screamed and leapt back out before Pete was back, and banging on the bathroom door.

"Forgot to tell you, the boiler's out again – no hot water!" he called brightly through the wood.

"Yeah," Rose told him. "Thanks."

Breakfast consisted of burning; her toast, her hand on the kettle. Running back upstairs to grab her coat – she must have gone straight to bed when she finally got in last night – she stubbed her toe on the edge of the banisters at the top of the stairs. Cursing and grumbling she made it out to the driveway, only to be confronted by Pete informing her his car wouldn't start. Then she couldn't find her keys, so her car was out and a call to Mickey's mobile revealed that he was in no fit state to offer any assistance… and still in bed. Bastard.

"This is ridiculous!" she complained to her mum as she sat with her at the kitchen table, waiting for a taxi to take her to the nearest tube station. "It's like the worst day ever."

"Oh don't be silly," Jackie told her, placing a plate of breakfast in front of her toddler sister Kelly. Kelly smiled and tipped the plate straight over the edge of her highchair and right down Rose's leg. Rose stared in disbelief at a piece of banana sliding slowly down the porridge slick covering her tights from knee to ankle. Then she stood without a word and left the room to go and change. Behind her she heard Jackie breaking into peels of laughter and admonishing her sister fondly.

Half an hour – the taxi was late – and two pairs of tights later – she of course had laddered the first ones – Rose was finally on her way to the tube station.

"Nice day planned love?" the taxi driver asked, evidently believing she might be on her way to do something fun, maybe indulging in some window shopping before the start of the January sales. Like a normal person.

"Not really," she grumped.

"Oh," he said, evidently stumped by this response.

"Sorry," Rose told him, feeling bad for being moody. "Just having one of those bad karma days – you know, nothing going right."

This day was proving to be anything _but_ nice in fact, and Rose found herself reduced to praying to a God she didn't believe in, that if he just stopped anything else bad happening to her, she'd make some New Year's resolutions and actually stick to them for once. She knew it wouldn't work, and by the time she had waited twenty minutes for a delayed tube train, found she'd forgotten her security pass when she got to work and endured half an hour of security questions and checks to even get in the building, she was so hugely un-surprised that the lifts weren't working she gave a triumphant, "Ha!" as she began to climb the stairs.

16 flights later, she near-fell through the door of the open plan office she shared with over a dozen people and found herself to be completely alone.

"Huh?" she asked, spinning about, as if they might all be hiding behind her to spring out and yell, "Surprise!" at any moment.

She sat at her desk and frowned. She knew not everyone was in today, but she shouldn't be all on her own. She had a horrible feeling that she might have got it wrong about working today, but that was swiftly followed by the even more horrible realisation that she was supposed to begin chairing a meeting half an hour ago.

Sprinting for the board room, she wondered what the hell she had done to deserve all this.

An hour later, congratulating herself for still having a job - thanks to an incredible piece of quick thinking and fast talking that even the Doctor would have been proud of - she collapsed back in to her desk chair and let out a sigh of relief.

Then the phone on Pete's desk rang and she was just thinking about picking hers up and intercepting the call, when all the other phones in the office began to ring. Her heart-rate increased immediately. Something was happening – and it had to be something big. The call was from Downing Street. A terrorist plot that police had been working to foil had turned out to have rather more to do with ET and rather less to do with Earth-bound terrorists than they'd initially assumed. Rose excitedly put out a call to all field agents, and made her way back to the board room to help coordinate operations, amusing herself with the thought of Mickey dragging himself from his warm bed when he got his call. This was more like it – perhaps her day was looking up after all.

On the way to the boardroom, a damaged light fitting fell from the ceiling in the corridor and knocked her out. When she came round it was to be confronted with the information that she had missed everything. The aliens had been dealt with and Mickey was leaning over her, covered in some kind of purple slime and grinning like a fool.

"There you are," he told her. "Lying down on the job?"

"Shut up Mickey," she groaned, bringing a hand to her aching head. As if her hangover hadn't been enough. Where was she? She looked around and identified the Torchwood infirmary.

"You should have seen them Rose – Trelaxxians. I mean, those guys are gross," he shook his head and laughed, as if fond of the memory already. "And angry… and big. One minute it looked like you and me, the next… Boom! The size of a double-decker bus. You should have seen it."

"So you said," Rose told him. Inwardly she groaned again. Why did she have to miss out on the one bit of real, live, alien related excitement they'd had for months? Because a light fell on her head. For God's sake!

The rest of Rose's day was spent in bed. Their Doctor finally cleared her to leave twenty minutes after Mickey had given up waiting for her and gone home. Ironic? Definitely. Unexpected? Nope.

Rose headed home. This time she took a taxi the whole way. Strangely, nothing evil happened to her. Perhaps the universe had run out of bad karma for her. She felt as if she'd exhausted an entire planet's worth of it single-handedly as it was.

Back at the house she had been about to knock on the heavy front door, when she found her keys in the inside pocket of her jacket. The keys she had been unable to find that morning when she'd needed her car. Just great.

"Sweetheart!" Jackie, uncharacteristically, met her in the hall. She had leapt up from where she had been sitting on the bottom step of the rather-to-grand for her liking staircase, as if she had been waiting for Rose to get home for some time.

"Mum?" Rose replied, studying her mother. She had a look on her face she hadn't seen for the longest time. Not since Kelly was born. Kind of like unbridled joy.

Jackie let out a funny kind of squeal of excitement and grabbed Rose's arm. "Come through to the lounge darling," she told her, beginning to drag her towards the appropriate door.

"Hang on mum, I haven't even taken my coat off," Rose complained. Jackie released her as she shrugged off her jacket and placed it and her scarf, hat and bag on the hall stand. "And I've had the worst day," she went on. "And I really want a cup of tea." She pushed past her mum and through the doors to the large kitchen which ran the length of the house, and was in the exact opposite direction to the lounge.

"Rose please, wait!" Jackie called, hurrying after her. "You really want to come in the lounge, believe me."

Rose grabbed the kettle off the counter top and judged the weight of it, moving to the sink to fill it. The sink which looked out over the back garden.

"I will mum, but really – all I really need…" she tailed off, the kettle poised in the sink, one hand on the tap, ready to turn it. She stared straight ahead, through the window, on to the darkened garden. The darkened garden where the only source of light came from two softly illuminated window panes, incongruous against the twilight sky. Four white words hovered glowing above them, words that she'd never thought she'd see again. She was dimly aware that her mother had left the room, and that someone else had taken her place behind her.

"Hello Rose."

She looked down at her hands, and they'd begun to tremble. Adrenalin was rushing through her veins so fast she was sure it would pour out of her ears at any moment. She dropped the kettle in to the deep china sink and spun around to face him.

Same as ever – same voice of course – but same face. Thank God. But – hang on? Blue suit? She let out a long breath and gave him a shaky smile.

"Hi," she breathed.

"Hello," the Doctor said again and flashed her one of those disarming smiles of his.

She'd been gripping the cold edge of the sink behind her but she willed herself to relax and let go. "See!" she told him, pointing at him with a shaky finger. "Karma." He looked confused, so she took a step forward and elaborated. "I have had _the_ worst day – but if you're the payback, I really don't care." She grinned.

"Ah, well. You know in the Buddhist and Hindu religions, karma is the force produced by a person's actions in a previous life influencing their current one.. not much to do with having a bad day." He clapped his mouth shut at the fond yet infuriated look on her face.

"Oh shut up!" she told him, holding out her arms. "And give us a hug."

And so he did.


End file.
